Real Interest, Real Estate Prices and Monetary Policy

Abstract

This paper investigates the effects of inflation on real estate prices, particularly the discrepancy between the sales and chonsei prices of housing, in an economy in which real interest rates are secularly declining due to the fall in capital productivity. When real interest rates fall, real estate prices rise relative to chonsei prices, and thus the well-known adverse effect of inflation, or the discrepancy between the value of financial assets (or chonsei principal) and the value of real assets (or real estate), is aggravated although the monetary authority maintains the same rate of inflation. This theoretical prediction can help explain the trend of the ratio of apartment sales prices to chonsei prices. That is, the stabilization of inflation relative to real interest rates appears to have contributed to the secular stabilization of this ratio in the 1990s, while the fall in real interest rates appears to have led to the rise of this ratio since 2001.

Keywords

• 부동산가격
• 실질이자율
• 인플레이션
• 통화정책